The parent trap: Cash transfers and the intergenerational transmission of depression in South Africa

Abstract:

Please Note: This paper has been updated. Mental illness and substance abuse make up the leading cause of disability among adolescents around the world, and yet adolescent mental health is an understudied area in developing countries. This is partly due to a lack of high quality nationally representative data on the prevalence of mental illness, in particular, in low-income countries. The impact of mental illness in adolescence is particularly problematic, given the formative nature of this period. This paper provides the first nationally representative estimates of the intergenerational transmission of depression in South Africa, and in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using a longitudinal household survey, we find that one-third of South African children will suffer from depression if either parent suffers from depression - and that parental mental health is the single largest determinant of child mental health. The nature of the intergenerational transmission of transmission, and its key determinants, have not been studied in-depth. While studies exist, which examine the impact of cash transfers on depression, research on the impact of cash transfers on the intergenerational transmission of depression is limited. We use exogenous variation in the roll-out pattern of an unconditional cash transfer in South Africa and find that cash transfer receipt can have a large impact on the intergenerational transmission of depression. Our estimates show that the South African child support grant reduces the intergenerational transmission of depression to teenage children by more than forty percent.